


Lend Me Your Jacket

by juggieheadcoopers



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Apologies, F/M, Forgiveness, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 19:53:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10793616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggieheadcoopers/pseuds/juggieheadcoopers
Summary: It’s the morning after the Homecoming dance and Jughead is still upset with Betty after everything that happened, but even through his anger and their fighting, he still remains to be a gentleman





	Lend Me Your Jacket

Betty rubbed her bloodshot eyes as she leaned against the outside of the Jones’ trailer, smoothing down her dirt-stained dress with her shaky hands while she watched the sun begin to nudge its way over the tips of the trees, giving way to early signs of morning. Her head snapped up when she heard the door unlock from inside the trailer, watching with hopeful eyes as Jughead stepped out into the chilly morning air, still in his formal attire from the night before just as she was. Jughead barely glanced in her direction before trudging down the path away from the trailer park, and away from the girl who he believed had betrayed him. 

“Jug, please talk to me,” Betty begged, shuffling her feet along the snow-covered dirt road in an effort to keep up with his quick pace. “Let me explain to you why-”

“Go home, Betty,” Jughead shot back, his eyes locked on the path in front of him as he continued forward, completely determined to get as far away from her as possible. “I didn’t want to talk to you last night, and believe it or not that hasn’t changed in the mere eight hours since I last saw you.” 

“That’s not fair, Jughead, you know I would never do anything to hurt you,” Betty reminded him. “So why won’t you let me at least explain my side of the story?”

“You want to talk about fair?” Jughead spat, spinning around to face her for the first time since their fight in the school hallway the night before. “Okay, let’s talk about how my father, who was finally starting to get his life together, got arrested for murder last night even though I know he would never do anything like that. That’s not fair. And in case you haven’t figured it out by now, life has been particularly less fair for those of us with the name Forsythe Pendleton Jones so we have that going for us too.” 

“I know it wasn’t your dad,” Betty told him, her eyes pleading with him to believe her as she took a step in his direction. “I know he didn’t do it. I believed you when you told me that in front of your trailer, and I believe you now. I would never lie to you. I would never break your trust like that.”

“But you did lie,” Jughead pointed out, his brows drawing together and contorting his face into a look of hard disappointment. “You didn’t tell me the truth about the Jones/Cooper dinner from hell that I should have known was doomed from the start. That counts as lying in my book.”

“I’m sorry,” Betty breathed, her shoulders dropping forward in defeat and her eyes beginning to prickle with unwanted tears. “I’m so sorry, Jug, I don’t know what else you want me to say. The way I feel about you - it’s making me want to protect you from getting hurt and I sometimes forget that there’s a right and a wrong way to go about things.” 

Betty took a step forward to close the gap between them completely, her hands instinctively flying up to caress his cheeks and to her relief, he didn’t pull away. 

“I was wrong, and I’m sorry,” Betty whispered, her thumb moving gently across his cheek before her hands dropped to her sides and she slowly backed away from him. 

Jughead’s face softened ever-so-slightly when he saw Betty’s hands reach up to rub her own bare arms as a shiver overtook her body in the chilly morning air. 

“You’re cold,” Jughead noticed, his eyes dropping to take in the sleeveless dress that she had worn to the dance and her jacket-less shoulders.

“No, no, I’m fine,” she assured him, but the chattering of her teeth gave her away and Jughead narrowed a pair of skeptical eyes at her. 

“Bets, you think I don’t know you well enough to be able to tell when you’re freezing,” Jughead reminded her, already beginning to shrug his suit jacket off his shoulders and handing it out for her to take. “Here.”

“Jug, you really don’t have to-”

Before she could protest, Jughead was stepping around her to drape the jacket over her delicate frame, his breath tickling the back of her neck as he leaned forward to adjust the fabric around her shoulders. 

“Thanks,” she muttered, pushing her arms through the sleeves and pulling it tightly around her body. 

“It looks better on you anyway,” Jughead admitted, pulling on the collar of his white button-down shirt and undoing the top two buttons. 

“Always the gentleman,” Betty mumbled under her breath, smiling sheepishly up at him as the sun shone all around them, creating a brilliant glow along the perimeter of the trailer park. “Just like your Dad said.” 

“Yeah,” Jughead muttered, his gaze dropping down to the road as he kicked at a pile of snow with his smudged dress shoe. 

“We’re going to clear his name, Juggie,” Betty promised, reaching forward to place a reassuring hand on his elbow. “We’re going to figure out who framed your Dad and how they were the ones who really killed Jason. I promise.”

“Making promises you can’t keep is a dangerous game, Bets,” Jughead told her, not unkindly. “We’ve learned from literature and history books and various reruns of daytime soap operas, that traveling down that path leads you off a cliff of which you can’t return.” 

“I believe in you, just like I told you before everything got all messy and complicated,” Betty assured him, her eyes shining hopefully up at him as he tilted his chin to meet her gaze. “And I believe that together we can do anything. Do you?”

There was moment of silence that lingered between them in which everything they had gone through over the past few weeks flashed across his mind. And after every memory, good or bad, made its way down the assembly line, his thoughts always came back to one lingering notion that he could never seem to shake - it had always been, and always will be, Betty Cooper who he could count on to be there for him. No matter what. 

“Yeah, I do,” he whispered, his breath coming out in cloudy spurts in the cold air as his eyes tentatively flicked down to meet her knowing gaze. 

“Alright, then let’s go solve this murder,” Betty declared, gesturing for Jughead to lead the way as she started to pull his jacket off her body by one of the sleeves so she could return it to him. 

“Keep it,” Jughead insisted, grabbing her arm before she could shrug the jacket off completely and adjusting it upright on her shoulders. “It’s a long way back to your house and I know how sensitive you are to the cold so in case we get stuck out in the snow like those people in that movie about the ski lift, I’m not taking any chances.” 

Betty gave him a grateful nod, biting her bottom lip to hide her relieved smile as they began walking side by side back to the Cooper house. She wasn’t naive enough to believe that a jacket alone was meant to symbolize that he had forgiven her for keeping the truth hidden from him, but it was that jacket she would cling to for warmth and hope and any inkling that he might feel the same way about her that she did him, until they were in each other’s arms again. And for now, that was enough for her.


End file.
